Race Yourself is focused on 5k improvement measured four times over the year. Race Yourself is an event where it doesn’t matter how fast or slow you are, whether you’re male or female or whether you’re old or young as the winners are measured on overall improvement over the year rather than their absolute time, so ANYONE can win!

Race Yourself 2024

Race Yourself is back for 2024 and will focus again on quarterly performance improvement over the 5k distance. This time though it’s going to be based on parkruns, but any other 5k run or race can be included. This way everybody has more chances of clocking an improvement rather than just relying on one run per quarter.

How Race Yourself works…

  • All participants have a baseline time. This is the time that you are looking to improve on and “race” against for the duration of the challenge.
  • Each quarter the results will be published showing a % improvement against the baseline time.
  • The top 3 improvers will win prizes at the end of the year with the top improver being crowned the Race Yourself Champion 2024. There will also be an award for juniors.
  • Age and gender do not matter as everybody is racing against their own baseline – anyone can win!

2024 Specifics:

  • If you are a 1st Claim member and your results appear as a Bungay Black Dog on the https://www.thepowerof10.info website, any parkrun or 5k race you complete in 2024 will automatically be included as part of the Race Yourself challenge. You can check your times by searching for yourself under “Athletes”.
  • 2nd Claim, Social and any 1st Claim members who want a non-parkrun or non-race time entered will need to submit their times via the Race Yourself Submissions form* in the same way as previous years.
  • 1st Claim members’ baseline time will automatically be set as the fastest parkrun or 5k race for the last quarter of 2023 (Oct-Dec) as they appear on https://www.thepowerof10.info.
  • 2nd Claim, Social and 1st Claim members that don’t have a result on Power of 10 can submit a baseline time via the Race Yourself Submissions form*.
  • Don’t worry if you don’t have a baseline or aren’t running at present you can join the challenge at any time throughout the year. Your first submission or the first time your result appears on Power of 10 as a Bungay Black Dog will set your baseline.
  • Results will be published quarterly taking the fastest time recorded on Power of 10 or submitted via the form for each quarter (Q1 Jan-Mar, Q2 Apr-Jun, Q3 Jul-Sep, Q4 Oct-Dec).
  • Once a quarter we will also encourage a spot of club parkrun tourism – March: TBA, June: TBA, September: TBA, December: TBA. Dates and Locations to be confirmed.
  • 5k time trials may also be organised as part of regular training which can be submitted for the challenge.

* For any times submitted via the Race Yourself form, runners may be asked to provide evidence of their time, so the use of a running or fitness app is advised e.g. Strava, Garmin, Fitbit, Apple, etc.